Pizza at Home - Sicilian Pizza

Sunday is Pizza Day! Today we're having a style of pizza similar to one I had when Theresa and I were wandering around Venice back in 2007. Food shops there had giant trays of pizza at room temperature, and once you ordered something, they'd pull off a slice and then go toast it. It's Sicilian style pizza!

I was reminded of this style pizza from one of the YouTube channels that I watch. Joshua Weissman does a lot of the things that I like to do, remaking restaurant foods, making different breads, and making things cheaper. 

A couple weeks ago he made a Sicilian style pizza and I knew I'd have to add that to our Pizza At Home series. 

One of the things I like about Joshua's channel is that for all his ingredients, he gives the weight of each thing in grams. It's so much easier to follow a recipe with a scale than to have to pull out a bunch of different measuring cups. 

We'll start with 1000 grams of flour, then add our 8 grams of yeast and 780 grams of water. 

Ian is always excited for pizza day. It's one of his favorite foods. 

This is some of the wettest dough I've ever worked with. It's been kneading in the KitchenAid for about 25 minutes. 

Finally when it's done, you are supposed to slap it against the counter a few times. 

Super wet. 

We're also going to need a sauce for this pizza. I've got a sauce recipe I like for other pizzas, but I'm going to go with the sauce from the video above. Super simple. Olive oil, tomatoes, red pepper flakes, garlic, then a little salt, pepper, and maybe some sugar to taste. 

Eight cloves of garlic goes from this. 

To peeled. 

To diced. 

And then into the hot olive oil along with the red pepper flakes until it becomes fragrant. 

Next comes the tomatoes. They'll cook for 8-10 minutes until they reduce. 

A few minutes later, the water has started to boil off. But I'm not going to put this chunky sauce on my pizza. 

A trip through the food processor turned this smooth. 

My dough has been rising for the last 4 hours or so. Super messy in the bowl. 

For the next rise, it's going into the final baking dish, a half-sheet pan coated with olive oil. 

I poured the dough onto the sheet pan and then stretched it to the sides as best I could. 

The dough relaxed and eventually stretched all the way to the sides. I oiled a second sheet pan, flipped it over, and let it sit for another 2 hours to rise. 

After 2 hours, the dough was going over the sides of the pan. It's wet and now it's filled with air bubbles. 

My sauce has been chilling in the fridge for a while and now it's time to sauce the dough. I initially used a wooden spoon, but any time I spooned sauce onto the dough, it deflated that area. I turned to my silicone pastry brush and lightly brushed the sauce onto the pizza dough without deflating it too much.  

This is such a huge pizza, we're going with two different toppings. Ham and Pineapple, along with the standard Pepperoni. 

I've made enough doughs and seen a few explosions. I didn't want the dough to expand and push all my toppings onto the bottom of the oven. I took out some insurance by making a secondary pan with heavy duty aluminum foil. 

But I didn't need to worry. The pizza cooked perfectly! Twenty-five minutes later, it's ready to eat! 

Let's eat it!

Two slices of this pizza is very filling. 

The crust is over an inch thick, with just a little bit of sauce, cheese, and topping. It's a very thick bread, just like I remember it. I don't particularly care for this sauce though. I like the regular pizza sauce flavors with oregano, thyme, and other Italian seasonings. This one with just garlic and red pepper isn't doing it for me. 

Kids, how do you like it? 

Ian thought it was one of the best pizzas I've made. What do you like about it Ian? "Everything. The crust, the sauce, and the toppings." 

Thumbs up from Alli too. 

Richard and Chi thought it was tasty, though Chi wants me to make that Napa Rose signature pizzetta again. 

Tasty pizza and one more for our list of unique pizzas we've made at home!